Finnigan-McNeill Properties offers investment in property renovation with an advertised 10% Return On Investment (ROI).
Investors invest in individual properties which Finnigan-McNeill renovates and either sells or rents out.
Finnigan-McNeill’s website makes clear however that the company is committed to a 10% “guaranteed” return regardless of whether the property the investor invests in makes a 10% return on sale.
10% Minimum Fixed Guaranteed Return
Looking to get a better return from your savings than what the banks are offering?
We offer a GUARANTEED Minimum Fixed 10% ROI
On their website, this return is described as a 12 month investment (“Receive your initial investment plus your minimum Fixed 10% ROI within 12 months”). However, the website also holds out the possibility that investors may be able to realise their 10% ROI quicker than this if the property is sold quickly enough, and reinvest their funds. The website suggests that investors can make a 21.1% annual return by investing in a property which exits in six months paying 10%, and then another which exits in six months also paying 10%.
Who is Finnigan-McNeill Properties?
No details of the directors of Finnigan-McNeill are provided on its website. Companies House shows that the directors are Darren James McNeill and Kay Louise Finnigan, who jointly own the company.
Finnigan-McNeill Properties Limited was incorporated in January 2017 and its last accounts (made up to January 2018) show it to have minus £10,402 in net assets. These accounts were unaudited due to Finnigan-McNeill’s small size and did not include a profit and loss account.
How safe is the investment?
This is an unregulated investment in a small company and if Finnigan-McNeill Properties fails to make sufficient returns to pay its investors 10% per year, you risk losing up to 100% of your money.
Finnigan-McNeill “guarantees” to pay its investors a return of 10% on their property. This means you are not just investing in a particular property, but the financial strength of the company as a whole.
While it is perfectly possible to renovate a cheap property and generate a 10% return (after costs), there is no guarantee that Finnigan-McNeill will be able to do so consistently, while meeting its own costs.
If the company is unable to meet its guarantee to pay a return of 10% to another investor, they will be unable to carry on trading and renovating your own property.
Illegal financial promotions
Finnigan-McNeill’s website represents a clear financial promotion, with repeated inducements to invest.
Are you looking at how you can maximise the growth of your existing capital funds?
Are you currently saving for your next BTL deposit?
Are you looking to reduce the time length for your next BTL purchase?
Leaving your current funds in a “savings account” offering a low APR isn’t maximising its full potential, and it is making you miss out. It is possible to gain a minimum 10% ROI (or up to 21.1%) with us.
Not having your money working for you is in essence losing you money!
It is illegal to issue financial promotions in the UK without authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority, unless the promotion is issued to a very narrow category of high net worth and sophisticated investors. A search for Finnigan-McNeill Properties on the FCA register produced no results.
Finnigan-McNeill’s website is highly misleading, with repeated references to the investment as “guaranteed”, which it is not. No references to the risk that Finnigan-McNeill defaults on its “guarantee” to pay its investors 10% per annum is mentioned anywhere on its promotional website.
The website also misleadingly pretends that investors looking to get a better rate of return from their cash savings are a suitable target market for an extremely high risk investment into a small unregulated company.
“Legal Charge”
Finnigan-McNeill states that investors will have a legal charge over the property they are investing in.
Investors should not assume that as they have a legal charge over a property, there is no risk of losing money. If Finnigan-McNeill goes bust because they are unable to meet their commitment to pay a “guaranteed” return of 10% per year, investors may be left with a legal charge over a building site, which is worth considerably less than a completed property. Recovery would depend on what investors could get for a property in the middle of refurbishment in the North of England, for which there is a very limited market.
The pre-renovation value of properties purchased by Finnigan-McNeill, according to its website, range from £22,500 to £58,000.
Investors should also conduct professional due diligence to ensure their legal charge over their property is watertight.
Should I invest in Finnigan-McNeill Properties?
This blog does not give financial advice. The following are statements of publicly available facts or widely accepted investment principles, not a personalised recommendation. Investors should consult a regulated independent financial adviser if they are in any doubt.
As with any unregulated investment into a small company, this investment is only suitable for sophisticated and/or high net worth investors who have a substantial existing portfolio and are prepared to risk 100% loss of their money.
Any investment offering yields of up to 21.1% a year should be considered extremely high risk. As an individual, illiquid investment with a risk of permanent loss, Finnigan-McNeill Properties is much higher risk than a mainstream diversified stockmarket fund.
In addition to this, Finnigan-McNeill’s brazen disregard for the Financial Services and Markets Act, combined with their claim to provide “guaranteed” returns of up to 21.1% per annum, raises a very large red flag. Given that they are in constant contact with solicitors as part of their property business, is it really feasible that none of them pointed out to them that it’s illegal for unregulated companies to solicit investment from the general public over the Internet?
If you are looking for a “guaranteed” investment, you should not invest in loans to micro-cap property companies with a risk of 100% loss.
This review is out of date as of Jan 2019 and none of the above is currently applicable.
The author has also been unable to spell the names correctly despite them being clearly shown on the website and on companies house.
McNeill has two l’s.
Finnigan is spelt with an “i” not an “e.”
The owner of the web site was never contacted regarding this review and was unable to comment on the review given by the author of this article.
Thank you for pointing out the typos, which should now be corrected.
The review is clearly timestamped and reflected the literature at time of publishing.
You seem to be managing fine.
Contact from yourselves would have been appreciated. That way things can be corrected, but this would not give you much content if people resolved issues though.
I am not your compliance consultant. The time to correct regulatory issues is before the investment is offered and financial promotions issued to the public, not after.
Other than the fact that the “Invest With Us” section of your website now illustrates a 33.1% return over one year (based on three consecutive compounded property flips rather than two as at the time of the review) I fail to see what has materially changed.
Hi Brev,
Thanks for your comments. Firstly, I am not going to get into any type of internet war over your review of our site. I actually commend what you do for highlighting issues out there and those people who are deliberately trying to trick people into losing money.
I am unsure if you need to clear your cache on your browser as I have been through the entire web site and cannot see any of the content any more. Once you have highlighted that we have done something wrong we have been responsible and removed all of the content. It was never our intent to do anything that we should not have done, and once it has been highlighted we have resolved it straight away.
We try to be as completely open and transparent as we possibly can. We are active member of the PropertyHub.net and have documented our entire property journey on this site from the very beginning, with detailed posts about when things go well, and more importantly when things go bad. When we started in property we found that there was nothing online that showed a real property journey, only the good bits which we all know isn’t always true. We also document everything we do on Instagram, so feel free to have a look:
@finnigan.mcneill.properties
I appreciate the points you have made, and everything has been corrected. Not all of us out in the internet are trying to dupe people, and everyone we work with (and continue to do so) only have good things to say about our openness and transparency, to the point that we now have recommendations.
I do think that you should really contact the owners of the sites that you review for their comments, as ultimately it is then just a 1 sided story. There may be others like us who did not realise and immediately changed once notified as we never meant to do anything wrong.
All the best for the future and thank you for pointing out or error so that we could fix it.
Darren
https://f-m-p.uk/invest-with-us still shows your investment literature.
Thanks, that was an expired link that was not on any of the menu’s on the website which is why it was missed. The page has been deleted completely – Error 404
LOL, I’ve seen things about this company before and the comment thread sums it up.
I’m sure you have Jon, lol….
Go on. What have you heard?
Oh, and so you are aware we no longer use clients money for purchasing so I’m defo all ears on this one!
Darren